Film review: Devil’s Due (15, 89 min)

Devil's Due

Published:13:00Saturday 18 January 2014

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Things that go bump in the womb...

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s laboured found-footage horror is the unholy union of Paranormal Activity and Rosemary’s Baby – Prenatal Activity, if you will – which employs video camera footage and CCTV recordings to chart the nightmarish experiences of two first-time parents, whose unborn child is the seed of Beelzebub.

A passage from the Bible, which foretells the coming of the antichrist, opens the film and is repeated by a crazed priest as the doomed mother-to-be approaches full term.

Screenwriter Lindsay Devlin breastfeeds her thinly sketched characters clunky dialogue. She also glosses over gaping plot holes, not least the lost final night of the couple’s honeymoon, which results in Satan impregnating the blushing bride in a cave laden with ancient runes.

The newlywed’s video camera captures this demonic intervention yet the couple don’t review the footage or proudly screen the video for relatives, which would tip the wink about the conception from hell.

Zach McCall (Zach Gilford) has grown up in a family that records every important event on camera so on the eve of his wedding to sweetheart Samantha (Allison Miller), he begins a video diary.

Following a perfect wedding, Zach and Sam jet off to sun-drenched Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, where a psychic (DeMaris Gordon) reads the bride’s palm and proclaims, “No family, no past. You were born from death!”.

Zach handily fills in that plot hole with a throwaway line of expository dialogue: “Her parents were killed in a car crash - Sam was cut out of the womb.”

Returning home to American suburbia, Sam discovers she is pregnant, which is curious since she has been diligently taking the pill.

Zach excitedly records the next nine months and notices changes in his wife’s behaviour.

At first, he forgives her fits and outbursts as the nerves of an expectant mother but as the weeks pass and Sam’s mood darkens, Zach realises that something is dreadfully wrong.

Devil’s Due delivers shocks that will be disappointingly familiar to fans of the Paranormal Activity saga.

When the bridegroom tells his beloved, “I promise, I will always protect you, keep you safe,” he might as well start digging them both shallow graves in the backyard.